Mirage (Oregon Files 9)

It had been filled with tiny firecrackers. Ironically, they had smuggled them in because they couldn’t guarantee the quality of local fireworks from the nation that invented them. They lit off like echoing popcorn. Those people nearest the smoking eruption of tiny explosions stepped back smartly while nearly every other pedestrian edged forward to see what was happening.

For half a block, all eyes were on the sparking and popping bag. No one paid the slightest attention to the van.

They never saw what emerged from the top.

The technology had been around since the 1960s. Max had found the design specs on the Internet. The only issue had been finding sufficiently pure hydrogen peroxide to fuel the contraption.

Cabrillo had spent the morning strapped to a jetpack. Now, with the crowded street distracted by the continuous string of firecrackers going off, he toggled the switch that caused the fuel to react with a silver catalyst and expand in an exothermic reaction that blew superhot gas through the pack’s twin jet nozzles. The sound was like that of steam escaping from a loose fitting, but the exhaust was invisible.

Juan’s first attempts at using the jetpack tethered down in the Oregon’s hold had been disasters. Seconds after lifting free of the deck, he would begin tumbling in midair, and had it not been for the ropes supporting him, he would have killed himself a dozen times over. But then came the eureka moment when he intuitively understood the dynamics of this kind of flying and he could keep erect and stable until the tanks ran dry and he would alight onto his feet with the grace of an eagle returning to its aerie.

Max had done the calculations, and Cabrillo trusted no man more than Hanley, but as he lifted out of the truck’s cargo bed he knew he could be dead in thirty seconds. That’s all the time he had to soar four hundred twenty feet into the air and land precisely on the flat-roofed elevator housing. If he didn’t make it, he’d be just shy of terminal velocity when he augered into the pavement.

Cabrillo came out of the truck with the majestic slow rise of a Saturn rocket, the weight of thrust tightening the straps between his legs and across his back. He wasn’t going to bother with a helmet, but Max convinced him to wear it after mounting a camera so the Oregon could watch his progress as he climbed higher and higher. The world shrank beneath his feet, and he could tell that his launch had gone unnoticed as they’d planned.

There was nothing to be done about people in surrounding buildings seeing him. He could only hope they saw it as some sort of publicity stunt. Ten seconds into the flight, the top of the building looked no closer in the helmet’s monocular display, and he’d burned half his fuel.

But as the hydrogen peroxide jetted through the exhaust nozzles, the weight dropped and his speed increased. His acceleration was geometric, and quite quickly his target appeared to be within reach. The countdown display calculating thrust time showed he had eight seconds of fuel, and he had only a dozen floors to go. More and more of the city opened to him the higher he rose along the skyscraper’s sheer glass wall, but he took no heed. He concentrated on keeping his body still and his movement to a minimum. That was the secret of flying the turbo-vacuum, as Max called it. Stay nice and steady and keep corrective gestures small. He wavered only slightly as he shot higher and higher and knew that if he survived this, it would be an exhilaration he would never forget.

Four seconds left and he passed the thirty-ninth floor. He eased ever so slightly off the throttle control, slowing his assent. He didn’t want to fly higher than absolutely necessary.

He cleared the last floor with a second of fuel remaining, then realized he still had to get above the glass wall that encircled the top of the building. He didn’t remember if Max had included this final barrier in his calculations.

There was nothing he could do. He leaned in to launch himself at the wall and managed to clear it by kicking his legs forward. This threw off his aerodynamics, but it didn’t matter. The last of the peroxide fuel spewed from the pack, and Cabrillo fell two feet onto the top of the elevator housing. He managed to land on his knees and not hurt himself thanks to pads built into the thermal protective chaps he’d worn.

He slapped the quick release for the belt and shucked out of the jetpack like it was a cape. Empty, it weighed less than forty pounds. He was on his feet a second later, an FN Five-seveN pistol in hand. It was fitted with a silencer and an extended magazine containing thirty rounds, plus the one already in the chamber.

The guard stationed at the elevator had heard something landing atop the building and was slowly walking backward away from the structure to get a better look. His pistol was only partway up. Juan got the drop on him. The high velocity and small size of the FN’s rounds put the man down.

The Chairman took off the helmet and thermal chaps and jumped the eight feet to the terrace floor. He was closer to the southeast side of the building, so he took off into the artificial jungle. Cabrillo moved quickly, his veins buzzing with adrenaline. His senses were heightened to the point that he could hear traffic down on the streets even over the glass barrier. The second guard was the sniper, and Cabrillo saw him as he was scoping a high-rise about five blocks away. The way he held motionless and kept the weapon on one spot told Juan that this guy wasn’t as professional as the others. The building he was looking at had balconies and he’d doubtlessly spotted one with a sunbather on it.

He died getting an eyeful.

Cabrillo still had three minutes before the security team downstairs was alerted that something was wrong. He should take out the third guard now, but he was close to what they had identified as the air intake for the penthouse’s ventilation system. The mechanism was just an anonymous gray box nestled among the trees. Juan bent to it, unclamping a side panel that gave access to the sophisticated filtration system. He pulled the racks of molecular filters until the air circulating downstairs was the same choking smog the rest of Shanghai’s citizens polluted their lungs with every day. Next came the pony bottle of gas. It was a knockout gas similar to the one the Russian Spetsnaz had used to retake a Moscow theater back in 2002, but much safer. Cabrillo opened the tap and let the ventilation fans draw the gas into the suite and distribute it to every nook and cranny.

Then he went hunting for the third guard.

Mike Trono had said the man was on the western side of the building. But that intel was four minutes old, and these were roving guards. He went west anyway, keeping off the paths and in the planted beds as much as he could. He avoided the swimming pool area entirely. If Kenin got a glimpse of someone slinking around his little urban oasis, he’d bolt instantly. The man had the instincts of a wharf rat and three times the cunning.

Juan found a spot where he could look down the entire western edge of the building but couldn’t see his mark. He moved on, careful to disturb nothing. The man gave himself away with a sneeze. He was less than ten feet from Juan, hidden by a wall of ferns. Juan was about to take his shot when he heard Kenin’s voice and the girl’s reply. His hunt had drifted closer to the pool than he’d realized.

He waited. The guard did the last thing Juan expected. He came through the wall of ferns rather than stick to the path. Even silenced, the Five-SeveN made enough noise to carry to the pool. An assault rifle barrel parted the foliage. Cabrillo grabbed it, yanking the guard off balance even before he’d emerged from the artificial jungle. As the man’s head came into view, Juan clubbed him with the butt of his pistol, and again as he slowed the unconscious man’s fall to the deck. He checked for a pulse. It was there but weak. He would live.

The gas he’d released would reach maximum saturation in just a few minutes more. There was no use in delaying. He moved to the nearby path and slowly stepped out from the forest and onto the teak pool surround. The girl saw him first and screamed. Kenin looked up from his computer and startled. His sanctum had been breached.

“Hands up, now,” Juan ordered in Russian, and repeated the phrase in Chinese as Eddie had taught him. He gave them a half second to comply before shooting the pitcher of iced tea on the table between their chairs. Kenin’s nubile companion yelped again, but this time both of them raised their hands.

“Tell her to get into the pool and stay there,” Juan said, still speaking Russian.

The Chinese girl must have understood the language because she rose fr

om her chaise and jumped awkwardly into the azure water, her eyes like saucers and her pretty face ashen with fear.

Kenin regained some of his lost composure, his eyes hardened, and though his hands were still up, they were no longer comically stretched to their limit as they’d been seconds earlier. He demanded with hauteur, “Who are you?”

“The best man at Yuri Borodin’s wedding. And right now I am begging you to give me an excuse to put a bullet between your eyes.”

Understanding dawned on the rogue admiral. “You’re the Chairman. You are Juan Cabrillo.”